Privacy Policy

Here at Birmingham Hippodrome, we take your privacy seriously. We promise to respect any personal data you share with us, and keep it safe.

This policy explains who we are, what information we collect, how and why we use it, how it is stored, how we fundraise, which partners we work with, and your rights with regard to any information you share with us.

Please read this information carefully, as by providing your data to us you acknowledge you have read this policy and understand we will process your data in accordance with its terms.

Who are we?

Birmingham Hippodrome Theatre Trust Ltd (BHTT) is an independent registered charity (number 510842) with a voluntary Board of Trustees. We were established in 1979 to present theatrical productions, encourage the arts, and promote education. We receive no revenue funding grants. Our income comes from a share of ticket sales, commercial activity, corporate support and donations. We have a trading subsidiary, Birmingham Hippodrome Ltd (BHL), which covenants all profits to BHTT. For this policy, ‘we’, ‘us’, ‘our’ and ‘Birmingham Hippodrome’ refers both to BHTT and BHL.

Our offices are at Hurst Street, Southside, Birmingham, UK, B5 4TB.

We promise to use the information we collect about you in accordance with the General Data Protection Regulation (2018) (GDPR), the Data Protection Act (2018) and the Privacy and Electronic Communications Regulations (PECR, 2003). We aim to be clear when we handle your data, and not do anything you wouldn’t reasonably expect.

What information do we collect?

You may be required to give us personal information when you buy a ticket, register for a mailing list for updates or alerts, update your preferences, make a donation or join a membership scheme, sign up for an event, visit our offices, buy something on our website, apply for a job, visit our restaurant, book a conference or participate in a project.

We may collect the following information from or about you:

Name

Postal address

Telephone number(s)

Email address

Ticketing history

Billing/payment information (we keep the last four digits of a card number to help us
identify transactions)

Donation history

Communications preferences

Access requirements (for you or your party)

Allergies and dietary requirements (for you or your party)

Qualitative opinions or attitudes about our services and programme through surveys

Any other information you provide to us by email, letter, telephone, social media, via our websites or apps, or in person

CCTV security recordings, and possible photography or video at performances/events

Information that is publicly available

Sensitive Information: As recorded above, this includes health information such as disability needs (e.g. to assist with seating) or allergies (e.g. for a dinner or restaurant booking) which we may require. We may ask for other information specific to a job or volunteering role you are applying for. From time to time we might ask patrons to take part in surveys to assess ethnicity, amongst other aspects; this is optional, rather than mandatory, and you always have the right to decline providing us with this information.

Online Information: Through our websites and apps, we receive and store certain details through “cookies” which record how the sites are being used to help us provide improved services, analyse usage and enable transactions. Cookies are small text documents, stored by your web browser on your device when you visit our websites, which enable an enhanced experience by storing information such as your user details or preferences. You can decide whether or not to allow cookies on your device.

We keep a record of the emails we send you, and we may track whether you receive or open them so we can make sure we are sending you the most relevant information. We may then track any subsequent actions online, such as buying a ticket.

We use social media to provide updates on our activities and to promote events and projects. We may tailor adverts on social media and elsewhere online relevant to your interests. Depending on your own privacy settings, you may control Birmingham Hippodrome’s permission to access information via social media platforms.

We use some online tracking and analysis services such as Google Analytics to find out how our websites are being used, which campaigning activities are working best, and how we can improve customer experience.

From time to time, for certain marketing campaigns, you may receive personalised online advertising after visiting our website. For example, we work with visiting producers and agencies to create relevant advertising for future events, and this might be displayed based on your device’s IP address. Many of these online adverts allow a facility to opt-out completely or refine your preferences to make advertising more relevant to you.

Data from third parties: We may also obtain or collect personal information about you from other third party sources, for example:

a family member, friend or colleague contacts us on your behalf, for instance to purchase a gift membership or gift voucher

we may ask parents/guardians to supply information about under 16s for workshops or projects

if we run an event in partnership with another third party organisation, your details may be shared in order to help us run that event

if we engage an external supplier for photography or video

Why do we collect this information, and how do we use it?

We will use your information for the purposes listed below either on the basis of: performance of your contract; your consent (where we require it); where we need to comply with a legal obligation; or our legitimate interest or those of a third party.

Developing a good understanding of visitors, participants, ticket-buyers and supporters through personal data allows us to make better business decisions enabling us to operate, market our services, and fundraise more efficiently. We believe this will help us reach our goal of ensuring everyone is welcome at Birmingham Hippodrome.

We use the information we collect about you:

to contact you if there is any important change to your booking or visit

to fulfil our contract with you

to keep a record of the relationship we have with you

to process a transaction and carry out completion of a purchase (your personal information and card details may be passed to third party service providers; card details will only be used in this way for the purpose of handling an individual transaction)

to inform you about relevant events, services or activities we believe will be of interest, as well as opportunities to support our work as an arts charity (from volunteering to fundraising)

to provide a personalised service and ensure the best possible experience when you visit us

to administer any donations you may make, including processing Gift Aid

to ensure that the information we already hold is accurate and up to date

to improve our products, services and information in the future

to assist us with reporting and analysis for our own needs or the needs of any funding partners

to ensure we know how you prefer to be contacted

to protect against fraud or unlawful activity

to ensure compliance with policies, procedures and laws

to process any recruitment information, whether directly or via an agent, including sharing this with our third party recruitment software supplier

to share with approved suppliers (for instance for research and direct mail)

from time to time, to undertake customer research to help us understand how we can improve our services or information

to promote the theatre and its activities (e.g. imagery, quotes from social media etc)

from time to time, to make recommendations to you about other relevant cultural activities by approved partner organisations (NB: these organisations would not be in possession of your data, and the recommendations would only ever be supplementary to other Hippodrome information, for example, by way of a P.S. or a ticket offer on an email update, or within a newsletter sent by the Hippodrome)

Fundraising: We may combine information you provide to us with information publicly available from external sources in order to gain a better understanding of our audiences, visitors and supporters to improve our fundraising methods. We will tell you about current and future fundraising campaigns that we think are relevant to you, and how you can make a difference to our reach and impact through a donation or other involvement. From time to time, we invite supporters and prospects to events or receptions. We ensure these are cost effective by conducting relevant research, for instance by analysing your ticket purchase history, current or past donations/memberships, or by using third party information. We hold several events each year to ensure we can meet as many supporters as possible, and to make our fundraising effective and efficient.

Sharing your data with third parties: We will only share data with third party providers on the legal bases as listed below:

For fulfilment of contract: services such as our ticketing system (Tessitura), email service and mailing houses. We have agreements in place with each provider to ensure your data is secure and cannot be accessed or used for any other purpose. Your personal data is never sold to any agencies or companies.

Legitimate business interests: we may make data available to approved suppliers for analysis and research purposes only, for example identifying sales trends, assessing campaign effectiveness, or postcode mapping etc (e.g. this might include for instance UK Theatre, The Audience Agency, Baker Richards). This assists us with reporting and with our strategic planning, helping us apply our resources more intelligently. All such agencies will be carefully checked and have a separate data sharing agreement with us including non-disclosure agreements, and their Privacy Policies will have to be at least as secure as our own.

Consent: We use an online recruitment service delivered and supported by Jobtrain. If you use this service you will need to agree to specific Terms & Conditions.

Sharing data outside the EU: We are located in the UK. Some our suppliers run operations outside the European Economic Area (EEA). Although they may not be subject to the same data protection laws as in the UK, we take steps to make sure they provide an adequate level of protection in accordance with UK law. By submitting your personal information to us you acknowledge that you understand that your personal information may be transferred, and processed, outside the EEA. Where we use providers based in the US, we may transfer data to them if they are part of the EU-US Privacy Shield which requires them to provide similar protection to personal data shared between Europe and the US.

How can you update you preferences?

You can set and update your personal contact and interest preferences at any time, by visiting your account online or through our Information & Ticket Sales team, in person or over the phone. Every email we send to you will contain an option to unsubscribe, or you can contact us via the details below. In accordance with this Privacy Policy we will always contact you if there is any important change to your booking. Unless you ask us not to, we will tell you about our future events, ticket offers, our other relevant services (e.g. hospitality, memberships), or opportunities to support our charitable work (from volunteering to fundraising). We will only tell you about fundraising by email with your consent.

How we keep your data safe

We are located in the UK. Your data is held in the UK and processed on secure systems owned by Birmingham Hippodrome Theatre Trust Ltd and details are only accessed by authorised and trained staff. Only employees and approved contractors/developers are granted access to personally identifiable information. This will be from time to time, and only when they need to perform a specific job. If required by law (e.g. by police, regulatory bodies or legal advisers) we may need to disclose your details. We will ensure information is held securely, and only those who need access to it can see it. We will delete this information when we no longer need it.

Data retention: We will retain your information for as long as is necessary to provide you with the services you have requested or require from us unless (a) we must keep it to comply with applicable laws or evidence compliance with such applicable laws; (b) there is an outstanding issue, claim or, dispute requiring us to keep such information until the issue, claim, or dispute is resolved; or (c) the information must be kept for our legitimate business interests, such as fraud prevention and enhancing users’ safety and security. We regularly review email and paper correspondence and minimise our storage through archiving and destruction of out of date materials. We will store data in our ticketing system for a maximum of 10 years after your last transaction or communication with us. We have considered the nature, relevance and volume of this data, the potential risks, and the purposes for which we process your data. We have also considered legal requirements including financial (e.g. Gift Aid declaration and reporting timescales).

Changes to this policy

We may change or update this Privacy Policy from time to time. Any significant changes will be communicated on our website or by contacting you directly.

Your Rights

You have rights including the following:

to be informed of the ways in which we use your information, as we seek to do in this policy

to request us to stop processing your personal data for marketing purposes

you can request a copy of the personal information we hold about you

you can request that inaccuracies are corrected

you can withdraw any consent to direct marketing (please see the section “Why do we collect this information, and how do we use it?” above to see when we are relying on your consent)

the right to object to our using your information on the basis of our legitimate interests (refer to the section headed “Why do we collect this information, and how do we use it?” above to see when we are relying on our legitimate interests) (or those of a third party) and there is something about your particular situation which makes you want to
object to processing on this ground

in certain circumstances you can request that we limit or cease processing or erase your personal data

Do you have any questions or concerns?

Subject Access Request: If you wish to make a subject access request (SAR), you can contact us through any of these channels in writing. Whilst you are not required to complete it, we can supply you with a SAR form. We will try to respond to all legitimate requests within 30 days. Occasionally it may take us longer if your request is particularly complex or if you have made a number of requests in which case we will keep you notified and updated. We will require specific details and proof of identification. This is a free service though we reserve the right to charge for reasonable administrative costs if your request is clearly unfounded, repetitive or excessive.